Why You Should Pay More Attention to e-Learning Marketing

By Jack Griffiths
In eLearning
December 19, 2022
7 Min read

 

Many factors have influenced conventional education’s digital transformation, from the pandemic’s restrictions on public interactions to the rapid growth of tech foundations for e-learning products. Digital education has long been a niche of its own, although most of its players are still missing out on how to market their digital education solutions. 

The importance of focused e-learning marketing is frequently downplayed, while certain providers simply lack informed guidance. The good news is that you do not have to be a marketing expert to create a demand for your product and make it known. There are well-tried best practices and pro tips that can make your life easier.

The Ultimate Importance of Digital Marketing in e-Learning

When education is administered online, it enters a highly competitive environment. Like in social media, eCommerce, and other relevant digital niches, providers fight for user attention, turning traffic into revenue. 

So as with any other digital product, marketing is essential  to the overall success of any e-learning solution 

  • Engagement – only a well-engaged user can be retained and turned into a source of conversions (this is an especially important task in terms of education);
  • Brand build-up – your target audience (TA) should be widely aware of your brand and receive additional marketing stimuli (e.g., special offers, tailored programs, etc.);
  • Customer loyalty – an engaged user that recognizes your selling point and is incentivized to use your product will become a loyal customer.

Giants like Hubspot and Salesforce eagerly tap into education marketing’s potential, creating courses that both educate existing users and generate leads among potential users (Hubspot Academy and Salesforce Sales Development Representative Professional Certificate course at Coursera, respectively). 

To give you a practical advantage over every poorly marketed e-learning solution in the market, here are the top digital marketing tips by seasoned industry experts.

Digital Marketing Tips and Practices You Cannot Miss Out On

Below are some of the essentials of digital marketing in e-learning that you could easily overlook.

SEO Helps Learners Find You Online

SEO positions your product in the organic search online and helps build brand value through a set of practices that study and influence search ranking factors. It is paramount to invest in SEO as well as to make sure every little detail about your product is conveyed with efficacy, strength, and impact. 

For the best results, it is a good idea to have a dedicated specialist running your SEO. A specialized agency can help you achieve cost-efficient SEO and equip you with the necessary tools, even if you are doing your search engine optimization single-handedly. Namely, software like NinjaReports.com can assist you in tracking top keywords, conducting backlink analysis, and generating SEO audits. 

However, there are some key e-learning marketing practices that you should keep in mind:

  1. Emphasize strong keywords – highly-relevant keywords and phrases should be used across headers, pieces of copy, meta titles, and even alt tags in images; and do not forget about CTAs (call-to-action);
  2. Optimize loading speed – search engine indexing goes beyond semantics– check the overall performance and accessibility among  main ranking factors; make sure you can make your solution run smoothly and fast before investing more in SEO;
  3. Keep it unique – remember that the uniqueness and relevance of your content are the ultimate foundations of successful SEO.

The Right Social Media Channels Shape the Right Community

Social media outreach is a powerful source of traffic, conversions, and loyal customers. That is if you build a community of users using all the right places. When it comes to digital marketing in e-learning, the most relevant social media platforms will do, but you should have a properly segmented outlook on sources of  future users:

  1. Use professional networks to promote particular courses – vast audiences of potential users are unlikely to be interested in microbiology or space technologies; promote narrowly-specialized topics on LinkedIn, GitHub, and StackOverflow;
  2. Use popular social media for brand awareness – Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are your Holy Trinity of social media presence; for more targeted content, explore themed Facebook communities and Twitter threads;
  3. Do not forget about forums – Reddit and Quora have tons of themed threads with whole “clusters” of potential students that can be targeted by topic.

Email Marketing Is a Well-Proven Conversion Tool

The power of outreach through email should not be underestimated. It is gradually becoming a common mistake to neglect the efficiency of promotion via electronic mail. A well-crafted email newsletter does conversion rates wonders by allowing you to reach out to potential users whom you do not target directly.

Still, the main goal here is to make the newsletter unobtrusive and to not annoy people with faceless, loud promises. The key takeaways here  include:

  1. Give your newsletter value – direct promotion via email is obtrusive and annoying; your best bet is to share relevant educational materials or content with a link to your product attached humbly at the end or to offer free trials, coupons, etc. to try and incentivize users;
  2. Choose individual over universal – keep your emails personalized. Nobody likes to feel like a part of the bulk; so customize and target your email marketing (e.g., based on TA research and email address database building);
  3. Use SEO in emails, too – start and finish letters with well-composed CTAs and use strong keywords in the email copy.

Podcasts and Webinars Are Perfect for Pushing E-Learning

E-learning and digital media go hand in hand as massive volumes of information today are delivered by all sorts of blogging, and vlogging opinion leaders. Influencers have  trusting audiences in the millions, and people are also attracted by interactive opportunities, so try to:

  1. Promote via podcasts – study the podcasts that are relevant to your topic and negotiate promotions with their hosts; a more demanding alternative would be to organize a podcast of your own;
  2. Launch webinars – give potential students  a taste of what you have in store by launching a themed webinar (make it free to attend for more traction);
  3. Using other types of media – Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube can help you promote visually, making your content more attractive.

Online Marketplaces Are Brimming Marketing Channels

You can sell your e-learning product on online marketplaces, which is yet another practice that is commonly missed out on. Big specialized platforms have huge pre-formed audiences of users that usually encompass various segments and demographics. 

So why not turn a popular online marketplace into a marketing channel? Specific digital marketing tips here  include:

  1. Cover top specialized platforms – Udemy, Skillshare, and Teachable, should be your initial places to post and sell courses online;
  2. Become an affiliate to some – if you become a big vendor on some marketplace, you may get affiliate marketing options to organize mutual promotion with the platform;
  3. Build a marketplace of your own – the path of most resistance which, however, can open vast promotional and profitable opportunities for you.

Paid Marketing Channels Streamline Marketing Efforts

If you have a large enough budget, you may indulge in paid tools for online product promotion. There are well-proven instruments and approaches that you can confidently invest in, for instance:

  1. Use paid ads – Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, etc. offer specialized dashboards for buying and managing platform-wide advertisements;
  2. Go for affiliates and influencers – as mentioned above, seeking affiliate and influencer marketing options is a highly-efficient method;
  3. Hire an agency – an experienced provider will help you reinforce your marketing activities and streamline promotion as a dedicated effort.

Conclusion

A study by the University of the Potomac claims that 70% of students prefer online learning over traditional classroom education. And increasingly, more people are obliged to learn remotely, whether they want to or not. Considering all the factors, the digital education market is too good an opportunity to pass up. The above e-learning marketing pro tips should help you find your way around the fierce environment. So good luck exploring new horizons.

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